Xbox May Walk Away From Steam, As It Reportedly Prepares PC Strategy Shift Amid 2026 Reset

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https://wccftech.com/xbox-walk-away-steam-pc-strategy-shift

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“How many times do we have to teach you this lesson old man?”

Make Games For Windows Live again, but vibe code it, I’m sure this time it’ll work.

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GFWL wasn’t vibe coded? Yikes.

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Sony and Microsoft aren’t doing themselves any favors lately.

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So, they fail in their respective strategies. Sony with live service games and Microslop with their Xbox game pass and now they start fucking up even more to recoup those losses. It’s like every executive is one big fuck-up away from destroying all the good-will that took them decades to build. To me, the destruction is almost worth it.

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This is the natural cycle of capitalism. Company makes good products, customers are happy, company makes lots of money.

But now company isn’t growing fast enough. It must grow faster forever. Company must shake things up to grow faster.

Now company has a revolving door of idiot c suite with “vision” who all make things worse.

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Line must always go up. “Shareholders” cant loan against their shares if they are stagnant

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Why do I hear singing, and what are those ships on the horizon? I can’t seem to make out their flags, they all just look black to me.

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You will pirate Microsoft games because they are not on Steam

In pirate Microsoft games because they are Microsoft games.

We are not the same

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Meanwhile I’m the lazy one who stays in port and sees the games on the horizon but is not interested enough to set sails.

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Yeah honestly, do they have anything worse pirating right now?

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There isn’t even a need to, the games are garbage

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Good luck doing that for the latest MSFS. That shit streams from it’s assets instead from cloud storage instead of storing them on local media/storage making for a gloriously customer experience as it sounds

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Monday: “We want one billion users.” Friday: “We would like to alienate a bunch of users.”

Bold strategy, Cotton.

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“May” but reading the article, unlikely.

Microslop pulling from Steam is likely to effectively kill or close to kill their gaming division. They’ve already trained their players to be on PC with game pass and if those players want to own one of those games they’re most likely going to buy it on Steam.

Not sure another full XBox console release is going to go well for them anyhow.

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I don’t even feel comfortable logging into a Microsoft on an OS level on Windows. Which is a huge reason I never paid for Gamepass and never will. And only version of Microsoft I’d touch is ltsc which doesn’t have the Microsoft store installed.

So I’d pass on buying from the Microsoft Store or Xbox app if their games weren’t on Steam or GOG.

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I’ve heard rumors that non-Xbox gamers will often refund games if they’re required to log into a Microsoft account.

This move seems careless as people can’t afford to buy a next-gen Xbox if it were to come out because Microsoft themselves are helping to drive up component costs due to AI.

There is no manufacturer in the world (that I’m currently aware of) that has been able to avoid increasing the costs of their electronic devices especially if it contains a hint of DRAM.

Closing off a market like Steam to themselves is so short-sighted in my opinion.

Edit:
Also saw this just a moment ago:

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Closing off a market like Steam to themselves is so short-sighted in my opinion.

Pretty much on brand for them, though

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Looking at Xbox strategy I think it’s AI powered. They don’t make any decisions, just copy paste information to AI and respond with whatever AI output is.

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Playing Campaign evolved, so many things read like AI usage. The character animations and cutscenes move in a way I’ve only seen in AI video. The voice acting could just be shit direction with stilted delivery, but the lines that weren’t there originally read like someone’s idea of “Millennial” writing. Quips everywhere. Could just be a variant of Hanlon’s Razor.

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Dude I had no notion that it would be AI, in fact figured they would just reuse voice lines, but I saw an actual cut scene that looked like Sgt Johnson was an animatronic stuck in a theme park ride.

The same character who’s voice acting was iconic before…

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I’m hoping this isn’t a trend for the whole industry. That is Sony and Microsoft now. We had this fragmentation back in the mid 2010s where everyone thought they would better by being on their own platforms.

This is the biggest blow to Linux users since we can’t play games coming from the Xbox Store.

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I wouldn’t touch them on Windows either. No way would I want to log into a Windows account on Windows when they collect stuff like activity history and upload everything you do on your OS and link it all to one account. And that was even before the GDID news.

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This is the biggest blow to Linux users since we can’t play games coming from the Xbox Store.

Is this part of the “strategy though? “You have to be one Windows to play these games”. I don’t know that it will work though.

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So where does Xbox make money? It’s not the hardware. It’s the games. Seems like they should stop developing a “store” and a “platform” and just adopt Steam. I don’t think it runs any version of windows underneath. Refocus efforts in improving Proton, develop great games, offer them on Steam. My Steamdeck was the best mobile experience I ever had for some really great games that also worked on windows. If I could install SteamOS on my Series X, that would be a killer Steam Machine.

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Just decided to do post-posting research and it does run a modified NT kernel, but still.

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A console lives and dies by its exclusives. While it’s sensible for Microsoft to stop releasing on Steam, Windows gamers can still just buy MS exclusives on PC without having to buy an Xbox. If Xbox wants to succeed it has to stop releasing on PC at all. That’s not politically viable inside Microsoft, and so Xbox as a console business is not viable. Microsoft should kill Xbox or spin it off. This zombie division of a console maker doesn’t make sense.

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Walk away from? Steam isn’t on my Xbox now. Or do they mean releasing Xbox published games on Steam? Don’t care about that as long as they require a PC.

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“I do know like Microsoft has some plans with regards to how they show up on PC,” Corden said during the latest episode of the Xbox Two Podcast. “And I don’t know what that pertains to with regards to Steam, but the plans that I know about, and I’m being very careful here, kind of suggest it gives them a window to potentially pull out of Steam. So, I would not be shocked if eventually we do see a universe where Microsoft quits Steam.”

Yea its about Xbox games on steam.

So basically Games for Windows Live 2.0 - I’m sure that will go great. /s

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So that’s weird, Xbox striking at why people use Windows over Linux or Macs. Though Linux has Proton. Mac users, I figure, just have an Xbox or PlayStation. Nobody buys a Mac for gaming.

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They mean publishing Xbox games on steam, and they don’t usually require a PC, I can play Campaign Evolved on my Steam Deck

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Crikey! Consolitis is becoming more virulent by the week.

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And nothing of value will be lost

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